four the record

I could take the easy route out and talk about how cultural cues are abundant, highly educational, and oh so eye-opening for everyone, myself included.

Or I could just be downright honest to a fault and admit that I have never been more mentally and emotionally exhausted than I have been in the past nine months (that’s already three trimesters, where’s my culture-assimilation baby at) of living in America. Everyday I walk the fine line between familiarity and foreignness. How much is too much ‘outsider’? How little is too little individuality? Where does diversity end, and equality begin? If those are two completely different things, why do they all blend into the same grey area? My laptop marks ‘gray’ as incorrect, and even though it’s a simple matter of clicking a button, of switching from “English (UK)” to “English (US)”, I can’t bring myself to do it because of the years of being drilled on how to spell that very word by educators who stumbled over the basic pronunciation of other English words with clumsy tongues that mothered a different language. Every day I walk the fine line between familiarity and foreignness. Am I speaking too often of my home while eating, living, breathing in another’s? Am I a guest who is treated like family only to become family that acts too much like a guest? Do I sound primitive if I laud the fragrant rice that is heaped upon a plate made of banana leaf which I miss eating from with my right hand, thumb resting upon third finger, fingertips stained with turmeric, turmeric which I use to describe the sunset which you call yellow?

Picking up the cultural cues of a workplace is one thing, picking up the cultural cues of a workplace that resides within a larger culture that you’re still trying to fathom is a whole other thing. Onions have layers, cakes have layers, the in-between moments of waking up and falling asleep is layer upon layer. And just like an onion, or a burnt cake, those moments can really force one into unexpected tears.

Cultural cues are exactly what they are. They are signposts telling you that both paths lead somewhere but only one takes you where you want to go. Cultural cues is an audience that falls silent in discomfort when comic relief falls flat on its face. Cultural cues is a disapproving look with a shut mouth and a prolonged stare with no explanation. Cultural cues is a finger to the lips, a small shake of the head. Cultural cues is the little voice inside my head that tells me I’ve overstepped an invisible boundary and nonexistent word limit by being a unrelenting current of words when all people here want to do is to dip their toes in a trickling stream. Cultural cues always, always win.